


Six Years After

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: Flash Fic (A Collection of Drabbles, Double Drabbles, and Triple Drabbles) [18]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Book 2: Earth, Canon Compliant, Double Drabble, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 23:56:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11747841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: On the sixth anniversary, while you are living in Ba Sing Se, you wander. (Your legs are restless, and you have already drunk as much tea as you can, and you do not know what else to do.)Iroh contemplates his failures.





	Six Years After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zilliannie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zilliannie/gifts).



> This piece is heavily inspired by something that ao3 user Zilliannie (tumblr user angryinterrobang) posted on tumblr about a month ago (link here: http://angryinterrobang.tumblr.com/post/162071340631) and has been banging around my head ever since. Angryinterrobang, this is for you!

On the sixth anniversary, while you are living in Ba Sing Se, you wander. (Your legs are restless, and you have already drunk as much tea as you can, and you do not know what else to do.)

You wander, and the marketplace bustles; barterers yell, mothers sing to their children, star-crossed teenagers steal into alleyways. 

For six-hundred days, this is what you tried to destroy.

(For fifty-eight years, this is what you tried to destroy.)

Six years ago, you collapsed and wept, you _saw_ , and you finally _finally_ stopped.

 _Look, my son_ , you think. _Your death was not in vain, all of these people live because of your sacrifice._

(You think, and not for the first time, that this is not what Lu Ten died for, that he would have wanted you to conquer in his memory, that perhaps he would look at you now with something like shame.)

 _There are so many ways that I failed you,_ you think. _You were Good, until I stomped it out of you with my warmongering._

(Nonetheless, sometimes you wonder if you would trade all of these people’s lives for his if you could.)

(Sometimes you worry that the answer is _yes_.)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


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